John Boorman shoots Deliverance in such a way to make the audience to feel a sense of discomfort through the entire story. The director uses wide angle shots in order to create a sense of space. That the men are essentially very small in a wilderness that is vast and untamed, and most importantly that they are unfamiliar with. Boorman uses the scene with Lewis driving very fast through the woods with Ed as a way to show that these men are consumed by the woods. We see this from the reflection of the trees on the car windshield as Ed asks Lewis why he is driving so fast. Boorman sets up the fact that these are men going into dangerous territory without really thinking about it. They just choose to plunge in.
Boorman then uses dissolves in editing Ed and Bobby on the second day on the river. By doing so he creates a sense of peace as the day before Lewis and Bobby rode together and Lewis barked orders at Bobby the entire time. This sense of peace that we see is felt by the characters and this is the point where they let their guard down. Unfortunately for them two hillbillies have been tracking them and one rapes Bobby. The setup turns into one man dead hanging from a tree with an arrow in his heart and Boorman tracks the men for many minutes to show the gravity of what has just occurred.
From here the film becomes slightly more frantic. The camera itself enters the water when the men plunge into the rapids after being thrown off their canoes and we see the close up used to reveal the emotional nature of what is happening to each character. And even though the three remaining men make it to land the film still feels far tighter than it did at the beginning of the picture. All of the physical acts that had to be done are now weighing inside each character. Thus the medium and close shots created for the final portion of the movie reveal the anxious nature of each character and the secrets they are holding on to for dear life. Boorman is able to take a beautiful wilderness and reveal it as a place that is made very dangerous by the men that inhabit it.
